Good Men
by Bekkoni
Summary: Post "A Better World." Lord Batman tries to atone, but some sins are not so easily forgiven. Superman/Batman.
A/N: This is set after the Justice League cartoon episode "A Better World."

* * *

Batman listened to the election results over the radio in his cowl while he tied up the last of the bank robbers. His muscles ached. It had been a long time since he'd fought like this, hand-to-hand with people who didn't care who he was. Nine months of regular patrol still hadn't brought him up to the same peak condition he'd been in before.

 _Before you took over the world and crushed everyone like these men_ said the voice in his head that never, never shut up.

Fear glinted in the would-be thief's eyes. "Is this the part where you drag me off to your secret prison?" He wanted to sound tough, but his voice trembled and Batman was certain it was just the pain from a cracked rib.

"This is the part where I turn you over to the police." He handcuffed the man to a parking meter in front of the bank. Sirens wailed in the distance.

Stargirl dragged the last robber out of the bank. She tossed him to the ground and slung a rope around his wrists. She was silent the entire time, every muscle a stark study in tension. Bruce wasn't even sure why she'd stayed, once she saw him at the scene. She never even looked at him. He knew she was thinking about Pat, and how he'd died at the Justice Lord's hands.

At his hands.

Two police cruisers cleared the corner and sped towards them. When Bruce looked back, Stargirl was already gone. Bruce shot a grappling hook into a nearby building and swung off before the police came to a stop. He may not be an outlaw yet, but law enforcement wasn't fond of him.

In his ear, the radio crackled.

"This is the tightest election in decades!" the newscaster purred. "The nation is apparently relishing the chance to use their newly-reinstated voting rights. Polls are reporting a record turnout!"

* * *

Nine months of freedom and the world was already forgetting the Justice Lords and all they had wrought. When he ventured out of the Cave, Bruce saw it everywhere. Graffiti grew over previously sparkling clean walls. A man argued with delivery boy over the price of a pizza outside an apartment building. Sometimes a flying figure passed overhead, and people actually looked up with a smile rather than hurrying towards the nearest building. The police wore blue uniforms, not black flak jackets and featureless visors.

Bruce walked among them anonymous. Bruce Wayne had died at the same time as Wally West, now he dyed his hair and went by a different alias each day of the week. There hadn't seemed a point back then to keeping up the secret identity. Not when they all but ruled the world. Not when everything seemed so pointless—all their fighting, all their years of costumed vigilantism just a silly, childish thing that was better to grow out of. It seemed inexplicable to him now. As did so much of what they had done. He turned over each of those memories—the blood, the screaming as Clark's eyes bore into skull after skull, Luthor's body burning—and they seemed so insane, like it wasn't _his_ hands picking up Luthor's headless body, it wasn't _his_ voice ordering the military to attack a student protest.

At night it didn't seem so very unreal. At night the memories kept him awake, all those ghosts stalking behind him in his dreams.

It used to be he woke up with the image of Luthor pointing a rifle at Wally's head burning in his mind's eye. Now he came back again and again to Clark standing over that other world's Flash, fist pulled back He'd seen the footage from that last fight. His opposite number had made it a point to show him.

He wished he'd been there. _What are you doing_ he would have said. _Have you lost your mind. Have you forgotten everything we've ever fought for?_ That was the only time Clark had ever scared him, right to the core.

He stared up at the watery sunlight peeking over Gotham's skyline and tried to shake off the dreams. Posters from yesterday's election still fluttered everywhere, including on the fence surrounding the homeless shelter that the Bruce Wayne Memorial Fund was financing.

 _Make this world a better place_ , the other Batman had said, before he'd left to defeat every one of Bruce's friends.

Well, he was trying.

First business of the day was calling in to the new League. He hadn't talked to them in person yet. He probably never would, given how several of the new members had good reason to hate him and the rest no reason to trust a former Justice Lord. He'd pulled them together from across the globe, and helped how he could from a safe distance. Katana, Black Canary, Impulse, Dr. Mid-Nite, Kyle Rayner (how the Guardians had gotten John's ring from an alternate universe he didn't know, but Kyle was a good man), Mister Terrific, and Captain Marvel.

He let himself into a non-descript storefront whose sign read RELIABLE ANSWERING MACHINES. A secret switch under the counter opened a trapdoor that led down to a custom-built computer and mini-lab. He didn't use the Cave for these check-ins. Maybe someday.

Impulse appeared on the screen. Lightning crackled all around him. He grinned at something, or maybe at nothing. Wally was like that too. Always a smile, even when there was nothing to smile at. If Clark had been here, he might have said _Getting nostalgic in your old age_? And Bruce would have looked at Impulse, Wally's spitting image, and said _Oh, yes_.

"Hey Bats." Impulse jumped from one side of the screen to the other. "Got a lead for us?"

"Ras al Ghul's been spotted in Mongolia." He hit a button to send all the relevant files over to the new headquarters. Mr. Terrific would sort through them. "Send a team to check it out."

"I thought you—" Impulse stopped, went still. "I mean, I thought he was dead."

"So did I," Bruce said. "It could be nothing. But don't underestimate a man who can bottle immortality."

Impulse nodded. Behind him, Kyle Rayner walked by. His face jerked towards the screen and then he turned away and walked on. Bruce had no idea why he'd agreed to join the new League. From what little he'd heard, the Guardians had been appalled by John's activities those two years.

"We'll take care of it." Impulse looked towards something off-screen and the grin reappeared. "Bye, Bats."

Bruce switched off the screen and went to work. In Kaznia, two former generals were trying to seize power in the vacuum left by the disappearance of the Justice Lords. Bruce arranged for several of the generals' private scandals to be released to the press and then funneled money into a pro-election revolutionary group. Then he went and checked on the cameras stationed in the metahuman prison off the coast of Juneau. Vandal Savage was still locked up right where he was supposed to be. Then he turned on the bugs he'd planted in the Metropolis courtroom where Black Mask was being tried for murder, conspiracy, and racketeering.

There were dozens of supervillains on trial right now. Everyone jailed under the Lords' regime was being retried. Bruce followed as many as he could. Ones like the Joker weren't a danger anymore, not after Clark's procedures. But semi-normal criminals like Black Mask had escaped the lobotomies.

Bruce held his breath while the jury foreman read the verdict.

Guilty. He let out the breath.

The computer went _bing_. Bruce jumped, but it was just a new email. He opened his inbox and found a message from apennyworth53 . A quick check showed that the address had been created yesterday from an account routed through several different servers on three continents. It'd take hours to find where it originated. Not that he was going to.

The message read:

 _Bruce,_

 _The boys and I will be in Gotham tomorrow. If you would like to have lunch, we will be at Sixth Street Diner at noon_.

 _Alfred_

* * *

Bruce waited at a table. The clock showed ten minutes past noon. He'd already shredded the straw wrapper to tiny fragments that littered the table, and the waitress had come by three times to ask if he wanted to order yet. He'd asked for a Coke, but he couldn't drink it. His hands shook when he tried to read the menu.

A chair scraped against the floor.

Bruce looked up. Dick took the seat across from him. He'd grown his hair out. He was lankier; he had a tan. Tim sat down on his right, and Alfred at his left.

Bruce barely recognized Tim. Three years on a nine-year-old boy might as well be a lifetime. He was a head taller, he'd filled out. He wore a t-shirt for a band Bruce didn't recognize. Dick was clearly training him. He had the same lean muscles, that easy way of moving like the world bent around him rather than the other way around. And he kept glancing at Dick, looking for cues.

Alfred looked grey. Bruce didn't remember all those wrinkles on his face. He wore a teal windbreaker and jeans. Bruce tried to find some memory of Alfred wearing anything but suits before, and couldn't.

"It's nice to see you all." His voice stuck in his throat.

Dick started to say something, but then the waitress appeared at his elbow. "Can I get y'all anything to drink?"

This was the sort of place Clark would have loved. Black and white tiled floor, Jersey accented-waitress, and French fries were the only vegetables on the menu. The thought was a razor blade in his throat.

"A Coke," Tim said.

Alfred sighed at him. "Tea, if you have anything but Lipton."

"Water," Dick said, and he did not look at Bruce.

"How have you been?" Bruce asked after she left. He did not say _Where have you been living_. He did not say _How about you come home_. Those were bridges he'd burnt.

"Good." Tim grinned wide and toothy. "I'm in Biology now and we're dissecting a frog. It's pretty cool."

"Yeah? What's your favorite part?"

"Mine had eggs in it. Dozens of them! Ms. Lari—"

Dick elbowed Tim in the side. Bruce knew what that meant— _don't give him any identifying details_. Tim fell silent and he stared down into his soda.

The day after Clark killed Luthor, after the Lords declared themselves rulers of the Earth and Bruce stood in front of a wall of cameras to declare _resistance will not be tolerated_ , he came home to a note. The house was empty. The boys were gone, and so was Alfred. Three suitcases and some of their clothes missing.

 _I'm sorry_ , the note read, in Alfred's hand. _But this is more than I can take_.

The rest of the lunch went as well as could be expected. The boys danced around anything too personal. Bruce tried not to ask any questions that might put them on edge. Alfred was mostly quiet. Sometimes Bruce saw him staring, like he was looking for a hint of the boy he had raised.

The check came too soon. They walked outside together, and then it was time to go.

"Bye," Tim said. He looked like he might throw his arms around Bruce, before Alfred put a hand on his shoulder and turned him away.

"Bye, Tim," Bruce replied. It seemed inadequate, he searched for something more to say. But then they were gone.

Dick lingered. Whatever he'd been doing these past three years, it hadn't been entirely easy. He had a new scar right by his collarbone, and it looked horribly like the marks left by a Lantern ring.

"You know," he said, his face a stiff, angry grimace, "Wally was my friend too. He would've died all over again, if he saw what you did in his name."

"I know."

He did not say _You weren't there_. He did not say _This was not for Wally, Wally was gone. This was so no one put a rifle to your head, simply because you were my son_.

"Good." Dick nodded. His jaw was all tense muscles. "Good. I'm glad you realize that."

And then he was gone.

Bruce stood on the sidewalk for a long time, staring after them. He hadn't bugged them, or planted any of the many tracking devices he had at his disposal. They would check, of course. He'd taught them well. Maybe it would show they could trust him. Maybe someday he would earn the knowledge of where they had been.

* * *

"How did this happen?" that other Batman asked him while they were driving through Gotham. Bruce doubted anyone else would have heard the undercurrent of fear in his voice.

No one but the Lords knew the story of the day Wally died. None of it mattered, honestly, save the last few seconds. None of them knew how Luthor found Wally's secret identity (a slipup in a convenience store where Flash had lowered his mask for a few seconds, Bruce found later. Luthor must have spent thousands of hours of manpower combing security footage for that). When President Luthor stepped onto that stage with the Wally handcuffed behind him, Bruce had felt his whole body go cold straight through muscle and tendon and bone. He'd been in the Watchtower with Clark, and Clark had gone so still beside him that for a second he thought Clark had already sped off to stop it.

It was too late. No one could have stopped it. Clark rocketed out of the Watchtower so fast that the sonic boom almost knocked them out of orbit. On the newsfeed, Luthor raised the rifle. Pulled the trigger. _Crack_. Clark arrived in time to catch a droplet of blood before it hit the stage.

And so the world had bottomed out from under them. The Secret Service whisked Luthor away before Clark could kill him dead where he stood, but make no mistake, he was good as dead already. Two days later they were in the White House, and Bruce had found himself standing in a hallway, wondering if what he was smelling was really burning human flesh.

"It wasn't just Wally," he said to the other Batman. "Things were breaking before that. I think—I think my world has been darker than yours for a long time, in the small ways." In the way the other Clark smiled big and bright, like his had when they were young and new at this. In the way he had been truly appalled at the idea his parallel had killed a man, and not just surprised.

The other Batman's hands relaxed on the steering wheel.

"Your Clark is a good man," Bruce found himself saying. "You don't have to worry about it. Thinking of ways to stop him."

"Yours was good once too."

"How can you be sure?"

The other Batman stared at him, eyes thin white slits. "You wouldn't love him otherwise." He said it like it was just a fact, like _humans have forty-six chromosomes_ or _the sky is blue_.

After they'd killed Luthor and announced the new regime, Clark had found him in his room on the Watchtower. A smudge of greasy, black ash marred the _S_ -symbol on his chest. He closed the door behind him and then ran a thumb over the cut on Bruce's cheek, the mark of some scared shitless Secret Service agent who'd gotten lucky. He'd pressed a kiss to the wound and whispered _I am never going to have to watch you bleed again_.

"It didn't happen overnight," he said. "I didn't notice." First Pa's death, then Conner's, then the election. Each one a blow from a hammer against Clark's soul. He'd tried again and again to find the last moment when he could have intervened, and he always failed.

"You should have."

Yes. But he was busy with other things. He'd been in love then, uncomplicatedly. And he was burning with anger after Wally's death, so hot and all-consuming that anything would have seemed right and just. Luthor's death, their dismantling of world governments, Clark's ever-increasing control of the population…they were making things better. They were making people _safe_.

So what if he'd woken up sweating most nights, in a panic over a dream he couldn't remember. So what if he felt sick every time Clark's heat vision pierced another skull, so what if he stopped going to the Watchtower, stopped leaving the Cave. So what if his children had vanished, at least they would be safe.

"I fucked up, didn't I," he said.

The other Batman laughed, because he was the only other person who would ever get the depths of the irony there.

* * *

After seeing the boys, he found himself wandering through the Cave. The Robin and Nightwing suits still hung in a closet. He'd let the Manor fall to disrepair (it hadn't been a lie, Bruce Wayne's death) but he'd kept everything here intact. Alfred used to call it a museum, but he'd meant the dinosaur and the giant penny, not all the detritus of their lives.

Somewhere, he even had the report Dick had written in sixth grade on Batman, where he'd vehemently defended vigilantism as only a child with poor spelling skills could. Bruce had a talk about secret identities with him after that, but the report stayed tacked to the bulletin board in the Cave, under crime statistics and police reports.

There weren't any calls from the League. That was good. He was trying to remove himself slowly, so someday Lord Batman could simply disappear from the world. He suspected he would always be involved somehow, but every time he wore the cowl now it felt like a noose. The League was right not to call him unless it was an emergency. Unfortunately, it didn't help his restlessness.

He sat down at the monitor bay and took a key from his pocket. This stayed with him always. It fit a drawer on the left side of the desk.

The lock went _click_ before he realized he'd opened it.

He slid the drawer open. Inside was a small black box.

Clark came over two months before Bruce had opened the portal to the other world. They hadn't seen each other in two weeks, which was mostly Bruce's fault.

 _You should come to the Watchtower_ , Clark said _, There's going to be a meteor shower. It's going to be beautiful_.

 _I'm busy_ , Bruce said. Clark laid a hand on his shoulder and he'd shivered.

 _Bruce…_ Something in Clark's voice made him look up. A pleading note. Clark didn't plead. _I barely see you anymore_.

 _Of course you do_. Bruce stood up and pressed a kiss to Clark's cheek because that was how they did things. They both had their parts, their scripted moves. A touch here, a kiss there. These meetings every once in awhile, to prove to themselves that this still existed. _And you know just where to find me._

 _What is it_ , Clark said. He wrapped one arm around Bruce's waist, pinning him there. Bruce thought he saw something in Clark's eyes, a hint of uncertainty. Clark hadn't been uncertain since Luthor died. It was like looking into the past, the déjà vu struck so hard it made him dizzy. _Really_.

He reached up and cupped Clark's face in one hand. What could he say? Bruce Wayne was dead. Clark Kent was dead. The past was a foreign country.

He dropped his hand. _Maybe I'm just bored. Not a lot to do around here anymore_.

That look in Clark's eyes faded away. He opened a pocket on his belt and took something out. _I have a question_.

 _Oh?_

Clark held out the box. Bruce took it, opened it, stared down at the ring like it might disappear if he just tried hard enough. His vision narrowed into a tunnel. He was fairly certain he stopped breathing. Stupid thing to do, around a man who could hear your every heartbeat.

 _What do you think?_

 _I—_ He tried to hand the box back. _No, I can't_.

Clark's face went blank and still and then his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Bruce was frozen to the spot. _I love you_ , he said, as if it were an explanation _._

Clark pressed the box back towards him. _Think about it_.

And then he was gone. They hadn't spoken of it again. They hadn't seen each other again until Bruce opened the portal to the other universe. And then—well, there hadn't been a point. Clark had vanished into another world. Sometimes Bruce wondered if that's what he'd intended when he'd opened the door, to simply make the problem disappear. Too bad it hadn't solved anything

Bruce shut the drawer. He still remembered the harmonic frequency of the other universe, and he keyed it into the computer before he could think too hard about what he was doing.

The monitor shuddered. Static crackled across the screen. The processors radiated heat. This might blow out his entire system. Not that he couldn't replace it, but smoke tended to linger in a cave.

Then the screen went _pop!_ and the other Batman appeared. Clearly he'd been working—his costume was torn and he had soot smeared across his jaw. He leaned tiredly against the desk, though his back went rod-straight when he realized who was on his monitor. His eyes narrowed to slits.

"Explain yourself," he growled.

"I have a favor to ask," Bruce said. Best to get right to the point. "I'd like to talk to—"

"No." Because of course his counterpart knew just what he was going to say. He reached to the left, towards the button that would cut the transmission.

"Only to Clark," Bruce said.

The other Batman hesitated. His head turned a fraction of a degree to the left, towards something off-screen. He lifted his hand again and the frame moved an inch to the right, because he was hiding the view from whoever was there.

"Who is that?"

Clark's voice.

"Why don't you go upstairs and get those sandwiches Alfred made," the other Batman said.

"You're not going to tell me." Clark again.

"I'm sure your mother taught you that eavesdropping is rude." The other Batman put his hand over the speaker, as if that would do anything to stop a Kryptonian. As if Bruce would say anything.

A sigh, and then a flash of blue and red raced across the background, up the stairs that led out of the Cave. They both stayed silent until the _click_ of the grandfather clock settling back against the wall echoed through the space.

The other Batman stood up. "You realize that after I do this, I'm going to root out every dimensional loophole you've exploited and close them. You can never contact this universe again."

"Yes." He'd do the same if the situation were reversed.

"Let me make a call." The other Batman vanished off-screen in a swirl of black neoprene. Bruce had just long enough to reconsider this idea before he reappeared. "I'm going to put you through. You have ten minutes. And I'll be monitoring the transmission, so the second anything happens that I don't like—"

"You know it won't." The other Batman grunted and then the screen went black. Bruce held his breath, wondering if his opposite had just cut the feed. But then the screen brightened again, and the camera focused in on a new scene.

The room was all white. Featureless. A steel table squatted in the center and a man sat behind it. He was in handcuffs and leg shackles, both of which were looped through brackets on the table. It took a minute for Bruce to be able to focus on his face, to realize that this was Clark. He was thinner than Bruce remembered. Pale from lack of sun. He'd never seen Clark look _pale_ before. He found himself gripping the edge of the desk with slick palms.

Clark raised his chin to look into the camera. Even without heat vision, his eyes burned.

"Clark," Bruce said, and he barely recognized his own voice.

Clark stared at the screen. The seconds ticked past one by one.

"I didn't believe it at first," he said. "When they told me you helped."

Bruce couldn't think of what to say. A yawning pit had opened in the center of his chest.

"Why."

"I couldn't—" _I couldn't watch you kill anyone else. I couldn't avert my eyes any longer_. "—I couldn't do it anymore, Clark."

Clark jerked against the chains. Metal screeched. All the muscles in his neck stood out like ropes. "We made the world _better_. We made the world _safe_. And now you're going to put it back just the way it was. Everyone who dies now, everyone who gets shot or blown up or dosed with Scarecrow toxin, that's blood on your hands."

"Maybe there are other ways to make the world better."

"We did what we did because there aren't," Clark said.

"Maybe we didn't try hard enough," Bruce snapped back. But all the anger drained out of him as soon as it had come. "We were good men, once."

"Still are," Clark hissed. But then his face softened and he slumped back into the chair. The corner of his mouth quirked up in what might have been a smile. "You always did have a bleeding heart, you know. Not that anyone else would believe it."

Bruce chuckled, and for a second it was like there wasn't a universe and a camera between them and the past three years had never happened.

The Clark moved his hands and the chains clanged against the table. "They took our powers."

"I know." He'd seen the plans for Luthor's weapon. Theirs had built the same one before he'd been elected. When Clark and the others hadn't come back, he knew what happened.

Clark closed his eyes, breathed out. When he opened his eyes again, they were wet. "Do you think we could have gotten it right somewhere?"

It was a question Bruce had asked himself over and over. Somewhere there was a universe where he and Clark were eating sandwiches together in the Cave, and here he was in his, trying to fix everything he had had a hand in breaking. His hands shook. "I don't know."

Clark looked away. Bruce watched him bite the inside of his cheek. "I am never going home, am I?"

He could do it, if he tried. The other Batman could try and block the path but the barriers between dimensions were ever-changing and malleable, and it would only be a matter of time before he found a way to reach across the void and pull Clark back to him. Maybe it would be better. Maybe with Clark powerless they could rebuild together.

He thought of Clark's fist poised over Wally's face. He thought of Dick, silent and pulled as taunt as a guitar string.

He leaned closer to the screen, so he could memorize every line of Clark's face. "No. I don't think so."

Clark nodded. He seemed to get smaller—maybe it was just a trick of the transmission. Bruce saw him swallow. "I think we're almost out of time then."

"I miss you," Bruce said. It wasn't what he really meant, but there were no words for that. _I wish we had been better_ might be more truthful, but it would also be cruel.

The screen went dark. Bruce stayed watching it for another minute.

Then he switched off the monitor and got back to work.

/End/


End file.
